​When there are different kinds of jehad why is jehad associated with terrorism?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Thank you. When there are different levels of Jihad, like there is inner Jihad, there is verbal Jihad, there is social activism as Jihad and there is fighting as Jihad.
Why is it that this last version of Jihad is what is most commonly talked about or propagated? See, there is at the heart of Islam a tension which is not there in other religions. That is, if we see in the Vedic culture, there are two centers of power, there are Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and they were separated. The Brahmanas had intellectual and spiritual power.
The Kshatriyas had political and martial power and there was separation between the two. Actually there has to be a combination of both for social transformation. The Brahmanas give the vision, the Kshatriyas do the implementation.
And whichever religion is spread, it is spread by the combination of these two. So, for example, Buddhism was like an unknown religion even by the time Buddha passed away. We had some followers.
But it was only when Ashoka adopted Buddhism, by being inspired by one of the followers of Buddha, that he used the state resources for spreading Buddhism far and wide. Christianity was a persecuted religion till Constantine adopted it. So there has to be a combination of Brahmana and Kshatriya or even if we are going to say in Christianity there was Paul, Paul was also considered an apostate, but Paul was more like an activist.
Jesus was more like a teacher. So now in Islam, fortunately or unfortunately, Muhammad combines both. Muhammad is their intellectual and spiritual leader and Muhammad is also their martial and political leader.
So among subsequent generations of Muslims, most Muslims, especially most Muslim leaders, they are most, I would say most influential, Muslim leaders who have been influential, they have focused on following Muhammad’s political and martial example much more than his intellectual and spiritual example. And now there are many pious Muslims who follow Muhammad’s teachings and they raise their consciousness by practicing that at an individual level. At a social level also there are leaders who stress Muhammad’s example of intellectual and Muhammad’s intellectual and spiritual example, but they are often sidelined.
They are not the prominent leaders. They may be prominent when it comes to Islamic apologetics, apologetics means when they are trying to explain Islam is itself not bad, that is good, but you know as far as having mass influence, they don’t have that much mass influence. So the leaders who have mass influence are the leaders who quote most often Muhammad’s political and martial example.
And because of this, although individually every religion can be a search for God, search for the truth, and Islam also at the individual level is a search for the truth. But collectively Islam is more often than not, it is more a political search for power than a personal search for truth or personal search for God. And when you get into the realm of politics too much, then all morality gets lost.
So it is because the spiritual or their conception of spiritual and the political are so intricately woven together for them that they often just come down to quoting Muhammad’s example of how he sometimes used questionable techniques of war. And they use that to justify widespread use of questionable techniques. So as of now, the way Islam is, there are many Muslims who are peaceful, peace loving, but there are many Muslims who are also misled by these, by this, as I say examples of Muhammad and the leaders who stress this example of Muhammad.
And that’s why Islam often gets a bad name overall, not just gets a bad name in the public eye, but even among Muslims, there are a lot of Muslims who are vulnerable to radicalization. Because the leaders are, the influential leaders among them are not those who are focusing on a spiritual example. The influential leaders among them are quite often those who focus on a martial example.
And that’s why in principle, we understand that no religion is bad. Islam is also a way to elevate people towards God. At the same time, at a practical level, we have to recognize that there is danger and we have to take whatever is required for protection.